


Of Bastards and Broken Things

by PardonMyManners



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drabble Collection, Drama, F/M, Fluff, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Prompt Fill, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-09-15 01:19:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 15,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9213053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PardonMyManners/pseuds/PardonMyManners
Summary: A home for all my Jon/Sansa prompts fills and drabbles. Chapters vary in length.---Once, there had been a foolish, bitter boy who’d gone north. He’d been full of anger and the broken pieces of dreams that would never be realized. Dreams he’d tried to convince himself had never existed at all.





	1. Thaw

**Author's Note:**

> All these drabbles and prompt fills were previously posted to my tumblr @pardonmymannerssir
> 
> Feel free to drop by and say hello! Most of my fics follow show canon with some book canon thrown in occasionally. 
> 
> Starting with oldest to newest as far as chapters go. This first bit takes place when Jon and Sansa meet again at the Wall.

Jon thought he knew what it meant to be cold. Ygrett’s words had become prophetic, however -over and over again proving truer and truer- he hadn’t known a Gods’ damned thing.

Death had taught him the true meaning of cold.

It had taught him the steady and unstoppable freezing of a man’s heart blood, the numb and painful loss of life and feeling a finger, a limb, a breath at a time. Blood thrummed through his veins again, but the biting chill remained, lingering in a way that no hearth fire could banish. The shroud of death hovered about him and he knew in his bones that he would never be free of it.

The horn sounded, the words dying on his numbed lips, and he was grateful for the interruption. There was nothing left to say. Ed’s eyes burned with fury, but they could not touch him beneath the ice.

Three strangers entered the courtyard as he stepped outside and his feet faltered. Some distant memory sparked at the sight of fire touched hair. Ygrette, was his first thought, a knife tip dragged up and through his guts, but the color was wrong.

Tully red.

He knew it was her before she turned, spotting him with eyes that seemed out of time, out of place.

Sansa.

Pretty, ladylike Sansa, so like her mother in beauty and scorn, battered and travel worn, dirty and damaged. His feet took him down the steps toward her and his fingers tingled as the voices of his family shivered on the wind, playing in his mind in a manner he had never allowed himself before, not since he’d taken his thrice damned vow what felt like several life times ago.

He stopped, Ned’s voice –his father’s voice- like a battering ram in his head. He wanted to touch her, he wanted to know that she was real. Beneath the grime she was still lovely, still pale as snow and pretty as frozen dew on winter flowers. He was afraid and he’d thought death had taken the fear from him. He was afraid she wasn’t real. 

She drew a breath that shook and launched herself at him, pulling him toward her like the tide to the moon. He caught her in his arms and began to thaw.


	2. Part One: Echoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her home is filled with ghosts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Jon/Sansa ficlet in the aftermath of the Battle of the Bastards. A truth is revealed.

Her home is filled with ghosts.

At night, Sansa stares for hours into the darkness of her room as demons stalk the edges of her sleep-deprived mind before she eventually rises in search of the only person who can understand. She wanders the darkened, frozen halls alone, her feet bare despite the chill, and listens to the echoes of her childhood.

He’s rarely in the same place twice, but they always manage to find each other, drawn together like two halves of the same coin.

Tonight she finds him atop the tower, staring north and painted silver by moonlight. Jon glances at her as she comes to his side and immediately takes off his cloak –the one she’d made for him—and drapes it about her. Sometimes his goodness infuriates her. Makes her wish to hurt him, to tarnish him in some way. It seems so unfair that he should remain so good after everything he’s seen, everything he’s been through when a darkness grows in her heart. The scent of him —leather, horse, polishing oil, and something deeper, something forbidden—warms her, however, and the darkness recedes. Just a little.

“I didn’t think to see you,” he says, looking north again. He seems older, encased in the moonlight, and the weight of his life is like a shroud about him, bowing his shoulders as nothing else ever had.

She sighs, breath condensing like delicate lace before a breeze sweeps it away. “It doesn’t change anything, Jon.”

Jon, in a rare show of fury, slams his fist against the stone of the battlements. “It changes everything.”

A tremor of fear slices through her, a knife of trepidation in her back that she’s been trying to ignore since they’d learned the truth. Sometimes he angers her, unintentional hurts her, but he also means everything in the world to her. Jon Snow is all she has left in the ruined tatters of her life. She reaches out a bare hand and covers his gloved fist. He relaxes almost immediately, wilting beneath her touch. There’s power in that, in her ability to bring him to heel with a touch or a look. A power that both terrifies and thrills her in a way it never had with Petyr.

“This is your home, Jon, you belong here, no matter who your father was.”

He still won’t look at her, and there is a stretched silence. “Will you ever trust me, Sansa? Truly trust me?”

Tears prick for the first time in what feels like years. She’d thought Joffrey and then Ramsey had stolen her grief, stolen her sorrow, but there is something fragile at stake between them, something that has whispered like a song on the breeze since they’d found each other again. Something she is terrified to lose.

Jon makes her feel like herself again.

“I don’t know, Jon,” she says, choosing honesty instead of empty comfort, “but I am trying. I want to trust you… I want to believe that I can.”

A faint smile tugs at his lips. He’s handsome when he smiles, bright teeth flashing, and they are so rare as to be precious. His hand turns and grips hers, the leather surprisingly warm, but she wishes she could feel the roughness of his palm and the callouses on his fingers against her skin.

“I’ve learned patience in our time apart, Sansa. I can wait.”

She sniffles as a few tears escape, and her head finds purchase on his shoulder. He presses a kiss to her brow, and it burns there like a brand, bright and strong against the horrors within her. She knows then that he will not leave her, that maybe he even loves her, and it is better than any song.


	3. Part Two: Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now there is a price she has to pay. She can still feel his hands. Feel his lips like chains on hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jon/Sansa post Battle of the Bastards, show canon.
> 
> Sansa won’t be sold off again, not to anyone. She thinks Jon might be her salvation. (R+L=J)

She and Jon meet weekly to discuss their dwindling funds, the smattering of local disputes, and to drink sour wine in her father’s study. Jon looks small, somehow, seated where Ned Stark once sat, an uncertain shadow of his father-turned-uncle, and to Sansa, he is like a boy trying to fit into the boots of a man. The picture is rather endearing and sitting with him like this, sipping from earthenware goblets, and talking in low voices, she can almost forget the axe that hovers above her neck.

Almost.

Petyr’s presence hangs heavier about her neck every day he remains in Winterfell, his eyes following her with vague promise. She could tell Jon, she thinks. Explain to him that she sold her soul for Petyr’s help, that fear and guilt and shame had driven her to keep silent about her plea to the Vale. That she is sorry for not trusting him sooner. Part of her had prayed Petyr would come. The other part had desperately hoped he would not.

And now there is a price she has to pay. She can still feel his hands. Feel his lips like chains on hers.

“We’ve another group of refugees to arrive in a few days,” Jon says, squinting at a letter. The scars on his face seem deeper in the flickering light.

“Will our grain stores be enough?” she asks, watching him carefully. A plan, born the day they’d learned the truth of his parentage, solidifies and grows. Her mother would never have approved, of course, but her father… well, some part of her thinks this is what he would have wished to happen, had things been different. 

Jon sweeps a hand over his face and sighs. “Barely, and we’ve not the coin to buy more.”

Biting her lip she rises and paces before him. She can feel his eyes on her, following the sway of her hips and the arch of her neck, and wonders at the pressure of his gaze. Wonders if there is more to it than brotherly interest and affection. It will be difficult, she knows, to convince him of her plan, and she thinks it might be better if she were to guide him, to push him toward what she wants. Jon is far too honorable for his own good. A trait which he and her late father shared. A trait which had led Ned Stark to his doom.

“We’ll just have to ration more carefully until the harvest and pray it is plentiful,” she says, mind miles and miles away from the conversation at hand.

“To the old gods or the new?” Jon asks with a slight tease and stands, stretching. He is strong, broad shouldered, and dark. Brienne had called him ‘brooding’ once, which he’d always been, even as a child, but still waters often ran deepest. And there is something deep and comforting about Jon, something that promises everything she’d long stopped hoping for.

She offers him her best smile, faintly sensuous and calculated, and it has the desired effect if the flush in his cheeks is any indication. “To any god that will listen, I suppose,” she coos and reaches for the wine jug. “Care for another drink, my lord?”

He watches her and his expression ’s hard to read. “My lord?”

Another smile as she reaches for the glass in his hands, purposefully brushing her fingers across his. “You are Lord of Winterfell, are you not?” her tone wavers despite herself and she ducks her head slightly to hide her face.

He surprises her by stilling her hand, leaning toward her across the desk. “No, Sansa, I am not,” he says with soft insistence. “Winterfell is yours, I would never take it from you. I am here–” he hesitates, nervous perhaps, and says instead, “I am your servant, Sansa, now and always.”

Sansa finds herself at a loss for words, studying him for a long moment in the light of the dying hearth fire as she numbly sets the wine aside. She’d meant to use him. Not cruelly, perhaps, but use him all the same. Looking at him now, she thinks that she might have gotten him all wrong, that she might have misjudged everything.

Desperation drives her to kiss him then, to tip forward across the desk between them and to press her lips to his. She won’t be sold off again. She won’t be made to leave her home or to hand it over to someone else, damn the consequences. But it’s the spike of heat in her belly and her fluttering heart that makes her kiss him again, and that has her breath coming a bit short as she tilts her head and searches for him.

He is still as a statue at first, cold and hard as she strains against him, but then he topples toward her like a crumbling tower in a sudden gale, lips moving with far more assurance and experience than she would have expected from a former man of the Night’s Watch. His fingers tangle in her braid, gripping hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to distract her from the way his tongue slides, wet and hot, into her mouth. She whimpers, caught in a tide she had not anticipated, a wave that threatens to sweep her far out to sea and leave her bereft.

She had expected it to feel wrong. Expected to have to battle back a swell of sickness and indignity in the name of salvation, but instead, there is only the familiar smell of his skin and the fire he has ignited within her, burning away the ghosts that linger in her mind. Some part of her feels reborn as she mimics the way his tongue rubs across hers, drawing a rumbling groan from deep in his breast. Some part of her wonders if this was always meant to be.

Jon yanks away from her, stumbling back with eyes wide and dark. Shame and desire battle for dominance on his features and Sansa’s mind is too scattered to take advantage of his momentary weakness. She could have him at that moment, she thinks distantly. She could bring him to his knees if she wanted.

“We can’t,” he says, voice breaking slightly. His lips are swollen and moist, color high on his pale cheeks, and there is a damp heat between her thighs. “We can’t,” he says again and leaves her before she can think of anything to say


	4. Part Three: Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She can’t lose him. To lose him now would be to lose all that remains of the girl she’d once been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jon/Sansa, post Battle of the Bastards, show canon. Sansa makes a desperate play to save herself and Jon from Littlefinger’s grasp. (R+L=J)

Jon avoids her.

He makes excuses never to be alone with her, to never speak with her unless at least one other person is present, and when she finds the courage to knock on the door to his rooms one night, he is nowhere to be found. He frequently finds a reason to travel away from the keep for days at a time and rarely makes eye contact with her. They no longer meet to discuss the issues of their House, their correspondence reduced to exchanges between servants and advisors.  

Petyr, in Jon’s increasing absence, grows bolder, cornering her in secluded hallways and touching her brazenly before others. She will not be able to hold him off much longer, and fear and panic begin to set in. For the sake of Winterfell, for the sake of her sanity, she must find a way to outwit him.

First, she quietly has their men spread the truth of Jon’s lineage, despite his wishes to the contrary. She needs the people talking, needs them speculating on their relationship and his birthright. Needs them to see what she sees; a union between the North and South, tying together too ancient dynasties. With the small folk whispering, she may be able to convince Petyr that, no matter his personal wishes, a union with the Targaryen heir would be too good an opportunity to let pass.

Petyr does not disappoint.

“Your cousin is a naïve fool,” he whispers into her ear, hands slithering like snakes down her sides. She suppresses a tremor of revulsion. “A naïve fool who could have the whole of the Seven Kingdoms if he wanted.”

Sansa swallows, willing herself to soften, to remain still. “Jon doesn’t want power.”

“As I said, he is a fool… and fools are easily manipulated,” Petyr’s words burn and slide across her skin as he breathes them against her neck, his thumbs smooth across her ribs, just beneath the swell of her breasts. The hallway is dark and empty, and her heart starts to thunder in her ears. She must play this carefully, so carefully.

“What do you have in mind?” she coos.

Petyr pulls away from her and cups her cheeks, staring at her with eyes that shine. Shine with madness and love for a woman who is long dead.

“I know I have failed you in the past, sweet girl, but will you trust me now? Will you forgive me?”

Bile and anger rise in her throat. He pretends ignorance when it comes to Ramsey, but Sansa knows better. He knew, he’d known the entire time, and still, he’d sold her to a monster. She mirrors him, placing a hand on his chilled face, and smiles.

“Of course, my Lord, always,” she says, praying that she can be strong enough to save herself and Jon from the machinations of a man who’d toppled an empire.

-

-

Jon returns from a short trip to deal with a minor local dispute, the hour late and most of the household abed. Sansa, clad in only her night trail and woolen dressing gown, bursts into his room without warning. He whirls on instinct, hand drifting toward the sword sheathed on his bed. He is shirtless; leather breeches unlaced, and he freezes at the sight of her. His face pales as she shuts the doors.

“Sansa, what-“

“I’ve had enough of you behaving like a child,” she snaps without preamble and offers her most withering glare. He merely glowers in return. The firelight paints… _interesting_ patterns across the toned planes of his chest and stomach and her mouth goes oddly dry.

“I’m weary, Sansa,” he says, sounding it, “can’t this wait until the morrow?”

Sansa resists the temptation to roll her eyes. “You’ve been avoiding me for weeks, and I suspect that you’ll avoid me tomorrow as well.”

He has the grace to flush, and ducks his head, glancing about the room, likely in search of his shirt. The garment lies across the back of the chair nearest her, and he seems reluctant to approach her in order to retrieve it.

“I thought it best if we, if I-“

Sansa scoffs and steps nearer to him. “If you shut me out of everything? If you pretend I don’t exist?”

He retreats from her and turns his back. “Damnit, Sansa! You shouldn’t be here; it’s not appropriate.”

A knot forms in her throat, and she feels oddly close to tears. Hurt brims in her breast, hurt and a desperate, terrible need that she had not anticipated.

“For Gods’ sake, Jon! Would you look at me!” she cries, frustration and hurt balling her hands into fists at her sides. The reality of the situation threatens to swallow her whole, to drag her entirely into the darkness that lurks with her every step. Gods, she’s ruined everything all over again.

She can’t lose him. To lose him now would be to lose all that remains of the girl she’d once been.

Jon turns, and Sansa sees the truth in his eyes a bare moment before he moves toward her, bridging the chasm between them with two swift steps. She barely has time to utter a startled gasp before he’s upon her, mouth a bruising heat against her lips, his arm a shackle about her waist as he tugs her flush against him, and his hand a rough scrape across her cheek as he anchors her face to his.

The kiss is messy, desperate and dangerous, and all her careful plots and plans shatter like tempered glass as she clings to him. She thinks that perhaps he wants to scare her, wants to drive her away with his roughened touch and biting kisses, but he merely draws from her a wild creature that claws and bites in return. Something in the scraping of his teeth across her lower lip and the rumbling growl in his chest makes her feel alive, stirs something inside her she’d long thought dead.

Sansa tugs at the surprisingly silken curls of his hair –how long had she imagined touching them?– and he presses her back against the door of his chambers, hitching her thigh to cradle him between her legs as he rocks forward. The length of his arousal is hot and hard through his trousers and the thin linen of her gown, and she trembles with sudden apprehension.

Nothing has ever been like this before.

Every kiss before Jon has been a trial, a stolen piece of her, every touch a sickening coil in her gut, and every cock inside her a hated enemy that has breached her fortifications. She’s terrified, not because he means to conquer her, but because she wants him to, and because she means to capture him in turn.

It dawns on her then that she can’t claim his soul unless she is willing to trade hers in return.

Jon’s lips part from hers with a deliciously perverse sound that makes her flush from her breasts to her cheeks as his dark eyes regard her in the firelight. His pupils are blown wide, and the heat between them threatens to consume her, body and soul.

“Why are you doing this, Sansa?” he asks, voice a wreck. “Is this what you wanted?” He punctuates the question with another lurid rock of his hips, his cock brushing across the sensitive folds of her sex beneath her gown and drawing forth a helpless whimper. She’s terrified and aroused and entirely off kilter, fighting to find some sense of balance with the heat of him pressed so close that she can scarcely manage to breathe.

“I want to stay here… with you,” she manages, gripping his bare shoulders as if he is the only thing in the world that might keep her from crumbling to ash and cinders. “I won’t leave again, I won’t let anyone take me again,” her voice breaks despite herself, the words spilling out in a torrent she can no longer control. Something about this moment won’t let her lie or tell pretty, sensual half-truths despite knowing she should, despite knowing it would be far safer.

Jon’s gaze softens, and he lifts a hand to brush his knuckles across her cheek in a way that breaks something delicate apart inside her. She could almost hate him for it, that tender look.  

“You needn’t do this to keep me, Sansa. I told you that I would protect you, and I meant it. You need never marry Lord Baelish or anyone else if you don’t wish to.” Her heart stutters, she’d wondered if he’d noticed Petyr’s intentions, it is both gratifying and terrifying that he had.

“It isn’t that simple,” she admonishes, strangely weak and listless as the lust inside her falters and flickers, as though it has taken some vital part of her.  “He will never let me go. I will never be free of him.”

Jon’s gaze hardens, and there is a flicker of violence in his eyes. “I’ll kill him myself if you ask it of me, Sansa.” He means it; she can see that he means it. She could see that he’d be willing to kill a great many people if she wished him to.

She sighs, tempted to push him away at that moment, afraid of herself and him, but he is a cage around her. “Not every problem can be solved with a sword.”

“So your solution is to seduce me and slowly drive me mad?” he bites back, and she can sense his bitterness, can see the old pain in his eyes that lingers and chafes in this new life they’ve created. Jon Snow, whether a true Targaryen or not, will always feel the unwanted bastard, no matter how many battles he fights or how many men he kills. Some scars never fade. She understands that far better than anyone.

Sansa studies him for a long moment and finds that she has grown weary of games, and thinks that they might never have worked on Jon anyway. He isn’t the sort to have his head turned by pretty words and empty smiles. The truth is what Jon demands, truth and sincerity.

“I want you to marry me, Jon,” she says, at last, lifting her chin. “I want you to marry me and name me Queen of the North and I want our children to grow up in a world that is better than the one we were born to.”

Jon steps away from her as though burned, a stricken look on his face. She is cold outside the circle of his arms.

“Gods, Sansa, up until a few weeks ago we thought ourselves siblings, how can-“

She raises a hand and shakes her head firmly. “We were never close as children, and we hardly know each other as adults, would it truly be so terrible? You want me… surely you can admit that you want me.”

Jon’s hand’s fist at his sides and his eyes squeeze shut as though pained. She wonders if she’s finally pushed him too far if this is the moment where she loses him forever.

“Yes I want you, Sansa,” he grinds out, “is that what you wish to hear? Do you wish to hear that I dreamt of you in ways no brother should dream of his sister long before I knew who my true parents were?”

Sansa’s heart stutters and his eyes open to fix her with a hard and broken glare. “That I have imagined you sprawled beneath me, lovely and moaning nearly every moment since you kissed me that night?” his tone is harsh, furious even, as though each syllable is a knife in his gut.  There is hollow, terrible torment in his eyes, and it breaks what little remains of her heart.    

“You said once that you would protect me,” she whispers, feeling as though she stands on the brink of a yawning abyss. “You also begged me to trust you… but if it is trust you want, Jon Targaryen” –he flinches at the name- “you will need to give me yours in return. Let me handle Petyr. I’m not the foolish little girl you remember; I learned much as a prisoner in King’s Landing. Marry me and trust me and I swear I will restore our house to its former glory.”

He studies her for a long, dreadful moment before sweeping forward to take her into his arms, all but crushing her against him.

“Gods, Sansa, I just want to keep you safe. I want to lock you inside the keep and protect you from everyone and everything that has ever hurt you. Don’t ask me to let you do this alone, don’t ask me to let that bastard torment you.” He pulls back to rest his forehead against hers and something like hope quickens to life within her.  

“Not alone, Jon,” she says, lifting a hand to his face. “My mother and father were partners, I would have that for us, or at least something near to it, but I need you to believe in me. I need you, at least, to believe in me.” She hadn’t realized how desperately she needed it, his belief, his trust until she says the words aloud.

He draws in a shaky breath, his arms tightening around her. “I believe in you, Sansa. Sometimes I think you’re the only thing in this world that I believe in anymore.”


	5. Pragmatism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Better a bastard than a Targaryen, it would seem,” Davos muttered and handed Jon a pilfered cup of mead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT: Bran reveals Jon's true parentage and everyone (mainly the Lords?) are unsure what that means and uncomfortable because they fear his allegiance may change. To ensure their continued support s/o Davos? Lyanna? suggests he marry Sansa and protect his claim. Jon and Sansa feel guilty, because each of them shouldn't want it but secretly they do.

“Better a bastard than a Targaryen, it would seem,” Davos muttered and handed Jon a pilfered cup of mead.

The noise from the great hall had followed the older man outside, echoing through the courtyard and up the battlements. They’d debated for weeks –he, Sansa, Davos, and Bran- on whether to tell the Northern lords the truth of his parentage, but when the Dragon Queen had landed on the shores of Westeros, he knew it was their best chance for an alliance. His bannermen had not taken it well.

Jon accepted the proffered cup with a sigh. “Aye. The North has no love for Southerners, the Targaryen’s least of all.”

Davos scuffed a boot across the stone parapet as a light snow began to fall. “They looked like a pack of chickens who’d just realized a fox crept into the coop.”

Jon snorted at the comparison and took a long drink from his goblet. “This is an unfortunate time to be arguing amongst ourselves.”

Davos rubbed a hand over his beard and frowned. He seemed to have aged a decade in the few months Jon had known him, deep lines of worry and sorrow creasing the corners of his eyes. “The Lords are unsettled that’s for certain, but if what your brother claims is true, and Lyanna Stark was your mother, do you not still have a claim to Winterfell?”

Jon looked out into the night and felt it staring back. “Mayhap over Sansa, though I’ve always held that she has a better claim regardless of who my father was or wasn’t, but not Bran, who is Eddard Stark’s true son, and as I said… the Targaryen’s are not well loved in the North.

”Does your brother want the crown?” Davos ventured, looking into his cup as though it might hold some answer for him.

“He says he has another role to play, one that requires him to give up his title and claim. He looked damned relieved when he said it, and I don’t blame him. ”

Davos mulled this over for several long moments before fixing him with a solemn stare. “What about an alliance, Your Grace, a marital alliance? One that might strengthen your ties to the North?”

Jon arched a brow, his gut clenching. He’d never given much thought to marriage, never had much reason to. Almost from the moment he’d realized what a bastard was, what it meant, he’d dreamed of joining the Night’s Watch, and Brothers of the Night’s Watch did not marry. But a King, well, a King would be expected to find himself a Queen and produce a few heirs –the prospect was not as appealing as it once might have been.

“Lady Mormont is a bit young yet to wed,” he joked dryly, and Davos scoffed.

“The wee lass is not of whom I was thinking, though it’s hard to deny that she would make a formidable Queen.”

“Aye,” Jon agreed, smiling into his cup, “she would be at that.” He swallowed some of the sweet mead and shook the snow from his hair. “If not Lady Mormont, then who? I believe Lord Cerwyn has a sister, and Manderly has a few granddaughters, though I’ve no idea how old they are.”

Davos was silent long enough that Jon grew nervous, and, a moment before the other man spoke, he knew of whom he was speaking. A thrill of shame and excitement warred in his breast. “Have you considered… ah, that is, the Lady Sansa would be-“

“She’s my sister,” Jon interrupted, turning his face to hide his expression. Sansa’s face rose in his mind, pretty and flushed from happiness and cold; snowflakes caught in her lashes. She’d been a lovely child and girl, but she was a beautiful woman, the sort men fought wars over. The sort men gladly went to hell for.

“Forgive me, Your Grace,” Davos said and Jon could hear his smile, “but, if what your brother claims is true, she is not.”

Jon’s hand squeezed the mug in his hand, a thousand images flashing through his mind, Catelyn Stark’s damming face in particular. “I promised her I wouldn’t force her to wed again… not after everything she has been through.”

Davos sighed bracing a hand on the frozen wall. “An honorable promise, Your Grace, but one you are unlikely to be able to keep. She’ll have to marry again eventually, at least if she marries you, she can remain here, in her home.”

There was truth in his words, though a dark voice whispered that Jon was merely searching for some excuse. Some way to assuage his guilt. The fluttering and tightening in his belly and groin when he looked upon Sansa told him that his feelings toward her were not entirely brotherly, and they made him realize what it was he had felt all those weeks with her traveling south from the wall. He’d marveled, then, at how well she managed to get under his skin, how she piqued his temper as no else had ever managed; the way his heart had thundered in his ears every time her cheeks flushed with the passion of her statements. The way her hair caught the sunlight and turned to fire. Like Ygritte’s, yet entirely different.

After Bran’s return, after he’d told them the truth of his birthright, his eyes had followed Sansa more often than he cared to admit, more often than someone who was meant to have been her brother all their lives should have. He’d found himself often distract by some simple gesture, some small smile or soft phrase, caught by the elegant curve of her neck, or the pale grace of her hands.

“I won’t force her,” he said, at last, barely aware he spoke at all.

“Of course not, Your Grace, but your cousin is a smart girl, she’ll see the wisdom in the match.”

Davos was right. Sansa would certainly see the logic in it, in fact, she likely already had, but for some reason, it was that fact above all others which made him hesitate most. Whatever it was he wanted from Sansa; it was not banal acceptance.  
-  
-

Jon was not entirely certain how the situation had progressed so quickly, but as Sansa’s fingers raked through his hair, scratching deliciously across his scalp, he had trouble remembering why it even mattered. One moment he’d been listing all the political reasons they should marry, unable to look her in the eye as he stood in her solar, and the next she’d been in his arms, tentatively pressing her lips to his.

Their tongues tangled, wet and hot, and so incredibly perfect. Gods she was sweet, and so soft between his arms, her breasts molded to his chest and her thighs pressed flat against his. It was better than he’d ever dared to imagine as he swept his palms up the curve of her back and down again, learning the feel of her, the arch of her spine, the ripple of her ribs beneath her gown. She nipped at his lower lip, and he growled low, hands clenching against the rounded curve of her arse, pulling her tight against him, and swallowing her subsequent whimper. His control was deteriorating rapidly, and visions of her bare and writhing beneath him were pushing all other considerations entirely to the side.

Sansa pulled away, breathing heavily, and studied him with dark eyes, kiss-swollen lips enticingly parted. It took every ounce of his self-control to keep from pulling her back in, to keep from losing himself entirely in her embrace.

“Yes, Jon, I’ll marry you,” she murmured, eyes flickering between his mouth and eyes, her cheeks flushed a very fetching shade of pink. Had there ever been a more tempting sight?

Jon drew in a shaky breath, brushing her loose hair back from her face with a hand that trembled. He chuckled a bit, a tentative sense of happiness and hope expanding in his breast, and he pressed his forehead to hers.

“Because it makes the most political sense?” he asked, half in jest and half in desperate hope that she felt some of what he felt at that moment.

Sansa chuckled, the sound smooth and sensuous, like silk dragged along the base of his spine. “There is that benefit, yes.”


	6. Of Targaryens and Starks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Nothing good ever came from a Stark riding South,” she says as a man brings his horse. The sun is high and bright, but the air is chill and crisp, the promise of coming snow storms carried on a breeze. Home, he thinks, with a building sense of dread and loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT:"And after months of denial about who was his real father, he finally understood and felt connected to him, cause he also was whiling to lose everything for the love of a Stark girl"

“Nothing good ever came from a Stark riding South,” she says as a man brings his horse. The sun is high and bright, but the air is chill and crisp, the promise of coming snow storms carried on a breeze. _Home_ , he thinks, with a building sense of dread and loss. 

Jon cocks a small, almost apologetic smile. He doesn’t want to leave her. His heart aches at the thought of leaving her. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not a Stark.”

Sansa’s eyes flash dangerously, and the spires of her crown catch the sunlight, blinding him. “I don’t care who your father was,” she snaps, “your mother was a Stark, and you are a Stark, and the Starks belong in Winterfell.”

She is radiant in her fury as it shifts restlessly beneath the courtly mask a lifetime of betrayal has forced her to wear. He thinks that he will never forget this moment; never forget the white and gray of her gown, the bright gleam of her eyes, the slope of her neck and the proud tilt of her chin.

But it’s a conversation they’ve had a hundred times, and each time the chasm between them has grown until she seems to stand worlds away from him. He tells himself that it is better this way, that it is better that she never learn the darkest truths and desires of his heart.

“We can’t afford another war, Sansa,” his tone turns pleading. He needs her to understand. He needs her forgiveness. “I must go South; surely you know that I must.”

“You mean you must marry _her_ ,” Sansa bites back, voicing what Jon had been too weak to express.

Jon swallows, a vision of Sansa in his arms, bare and lovely, arching into him and moaning his name, vivid and terrible and impossible. He knows it can never be, that to take what he wants, to beg her to marry him instead, would set the world to flame once more. He looks at her a final time, perfect and aching in her beauty.  

“Goodbye, my queen,” he manages, at last, his voice breaking despite all his best efforts.

Jon mounts his horse quickly, unable to bear another moment in her presence, and kicks it into a gallop down the slope, away from her, away from Winterfell, away from everything loves.

He doesn’t look back. 

-

-

“They are ready for you, my lord,” a servant says from the doorway, and Jon shakes himself into awareness.

Kings Landing sprawls out beneath him like a humped back whore, an intricate web of lies, deceit, and death. How many lives had been lost to claim it? How many people had been crushed to nothing just so that one mad ruler could replace another on a throne made of spikes?

The air is warm and smells of decay and shattered dreams. Jon closes the window and moves away.

He feels much as he had in those first moments returned to life; numb, empty, broken as he turns to his bed where a parcel waits. With a burst of ferocity, he yanks the cord free. His marriage cloak tumbles across the satin sheets and bile rises in his throat. Blinded by grief and dread, it takes him several long moments to realize that the colors are all wrong.

Where there ought to be red and black, there is snowy white.

Heart stuttering, Jon spreads the cloth wide to reveal a meticulously stitched three-headed dragon in gray with a pack of direwolves racing across the field below it. He runs his hand along each of the wolves, seeing Sansa in her solar, hunched over her work long into the night, and he can feel her in every thread, every pattern, every stitch.

Jon slips out of the city an hour later, headed North, and for the first time since he’d learned the truth of his parentage, he feels something akin to understanding for Rhaegar Targaryen.  After all, he too is willing to start a war over a Stark woman.


	7. A Friendly Wager

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ll have to offer me something of equal value, of course,” Dany presses, delicately lifting her wine glass and sipping from it.
> 
> Jon sighs, a sinking feeling in his gut. “I assume you have something in mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT: "And as he sees her laugh and flirt, charming every man in the room he decides he do is selfish. He stands up with only one though in his head: he will ask her for marriage now"
> 
> Okay, so this is sappy as hell and may require some suspension of belief. Sorry? Kinda? Anyway, Queen Daenerys comes north to visit the Northern court and badgers her nephew, Jon, into a friendly little wager. (Sansa is Queen in the North, of course. :P)

Another Lord in yards of silk –for God’s sake, it’s _snowing_ outside- approaches Sansa and Jon’s fingers clench reflexively around his goblet. From across the room, resplendent in a sparkling gown of white and silver, the Northern Queen smiles at the pampered buffoon and laughs lightly at something he says, resting a pale hand briefly on his arm. Jon considers hurling his goblet across the room if only to wipe the lecherous smirk off the prick’s face.

“My dear nephew, I do believe you are sulking,” Daenerys declares as she comes to sit beside him. The Southern Queen, lovely in her own right, smirks as he turns to glare.

“I am _not_ sulking,” he retorts, and she laughs.

“Interesting,” she muses as the silk wrapped lordling walks away, the hundredth man to be rejected for a dance with the infamous Wolf Queen that evening. Jon can see it’s become something of a competition for the visiting Southern nobles, and even some of the Northern ones, they’d even begun taking bets on who the Queen would finally concede to dance with. Jon is more than prepared to knock a few heads together.

His Aunt leans an elbow on her chair and props her chin on a palm, eyes twinkling with what Jon has come to recognize as devious mischief. Never a good sigh. “Shall we make a wager of our own?” she asks, head tilting toward where Sansa speaks with Tyrion and Davos.

Jon snorts and drains his wine glass. “I know better than to make bets with a Queen.”

Daenerys looks affronted. “Come now! You’ve been hovering about her skirts for well over a year; surely you can _at least_ ask her to dance-“

“Dany….” Jon warns, feeling his cheeks flush. His affection for Sansa, a woman he’d once believed to be his sister, is entirely inappropriate. Besides, she is his Queen, and he is merely the captain of her guard.

The Dragon Queen studies him for a long moment before saying, “How about if you ask the lovely Wolf Queen to dance, and she declines, I will recognize your sister’s Baratheon bastard lover as legitimate and give him the Stormlands.”

Jon blinks at her, caught completely off-guard, and says, “You can’t be serious.” He’d practically begged her to legitimize Gendry on several occasions if only so the silly idiot would finally stop proclaiming he wasn’t good enough for Arya and get on with marrying her already.

“You’ll have to offer me something of equal value, of course,” Dany presses, delicately lifting her wine glass and sipping from it.

Jon sighs, a sinking feeling in his gut. “I assume you have something in mind.”

A wicked smile slowly spreads across his Aunt’s face. “Oh, but I do.”

-

-

 _You’ve fought Wildlings and White Walkers. You’ve flow on the back of a dragon, and you’ve been raised from the dead, pull yourself together,_ Jon mentally chastises himself as he makes his way across the hall, heart thundering in his ears.

But nothing has ever terrified him so much as Sansa when she smiles at him, a smile that she turns on him now. Eyes warm and face bright, and it’s a soft sort of look, one he thinks that she may save just for him.

“Lord Captain,” she greets, tone rather teasing as he bows. She is more radiant up close; all defined curves, pale skin, and fiery hair.

“Your Grace,” he murmurs, making the mistake of glancing at Tyrion, who smirks at him knowingly.

“Is there something wrong?” Sansa inquires, stepping nearer to him, a small frown creasing her lovely brow.

“Uh, no, Your Grace, I uh, that is-“ Jon coughs into his hand, wishing for all the world that the floor beneath him would open up and swallow him whole.

Davos scoffs and only belatedly attempts to conceal it with a cough. _Gods, this is a disaster_.

Suddenly Sansa beams. “I love this song!” she announces, as the musicians take up a familiar, Northern tune.

Her reaction gives him the courage he needs, the courage to extend his hand and blurt, “Dance with me?”

She looks almost as startled as he feels when she slowly places her hand in his. “I-I would be glad to,” she says, voice rather husky and heat pools low in his belly.  Her hand is like a living flame in his, driving away the lingering chill of winter as he leads her toward the other dancing couples.

Jon thinks that he can feel his Aunt’s smug stare from across the room, but then Sansa places her hand on his shoulder, and he slides his across her waist, and there is nothing else. He’d never much been for dancing, few of the girls, noble or otherwise, had wanted to dance with Ned Stark’s bastard, but he thinks he manages the steps well enough. If Sansa perhaps leads him more often than not, well, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time. She’d been gently guiding him since the moment they found each other again.  

It’s delicious torture, having her so close to him, feeling her body shift beneath her gown and the heat of her palm on his shoulder.

“Have we ever danced before?” she asks. They are of a height, which makes it difficult to avoid her gaze, and Jon wonders, not for the first time, if she sees the truth of his heart.

“No, My Queen, I don’t believe we have.”

She sighs and chuckles lightly. “Sansa, Jon, my name is Sansa.”

He sends her out into a wide spin before tugging her back to his side. He pulls a bit too hard, perhaps, and she presses tightly against him, hip to hip. “You’ll always be my queen, Sansa,” he murmurs, his eyes dipping briefly toward her lips.

Sansa’s eyes darken as he spins her again and something between them falls into place. They find a rhythm as one song fades into another, and to Jon, Sansa is the mercurial weight at the center of the world.

He pulls her to him for the final measure, dipping her low as their chests heave from exertion, and Jon belatedly recalls his promise to Daenerys. Reality returns, and he can feel the eyes of the entire hall upon him. Sansa must see something in his expression as he pulls her back up, for she frowns and asks, “Jon? What is it?”

Jon, whatever his faults, has always been a man of his word. Valiantly ignoring a smirking Tyrion lingering at the edges of the crowd behind Sansa, Jon kneels and watches as her eyes go very wide.

“Marry me, Sansa?” he asks, barely managing to get the words out. Facing a horde of the risen dead suddenly seems rather appealing.

Sansa blinks down at him in shock for several long moments, and Jon wonders how quickly he might be able to flee the hall, or perhaps the North entirely. His Aunt had once offered him a place at her court, a prospect that seems terribly appealing at that moment. But then Sansa smiles, soft and real, and gets down on her knees as well.

“I thought you would never ask,” she admonishes and Jon, aware that Daenerys will be unbearably smug for the remainder of her visit, leans forward to kiss her.


	8. All I Know Are Sad Songs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon ran a hand over his son’s dark, unruly curls, and looked up and into the stone-carved face of his wife. An odd sort of peace washed over him, and he knew at that moment that somehow, somewhere, Sansa and Lyanna Stark were watching over them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT: Could you write about Sansa dying in the birthing bed (kind of a Lyanna parallel) after giving birth to Jon's heir and he has to try and grieve his love an raise their child alone? :)
> 
> Angst. Soooo much angst. You have been warned, heh.

Jon sat in the hall outside the chamber he’d shared with Sansa for a little over a year with his head in his hands. The screaming had stopped, but the silence which followed was far worse. It seemed to stretch out before him, like a yawning, frozen wasteland.

The door opened, and Jon lifted his head to find Sam, his face grave.

“The babe?” he rasped.

“You have a healthy son, Your Grace,” Sam said with the smallest smile. There was death in that smile.

“And Sansa?”

The smile faltered and Sam opened the door wider. “She’s asking for you.”

Jon lurched from his seat but faltered at the door, terrified of what he might find within. Sam guided him gently forward.

Sansa lay in their bed, and she was a mere ghost of herself. Her face was pale, lips drained of color, hair lank and moist with sweat as it clung to the graceful arch of her throat. Jon stumbled forward, kneeling at her side and grabbing desperately for her hand. The slight clench of her fingers about his was like a gift from the gods.

“Jon?” she asked, her voice scarcely more than a sigh.

He pressed the back of her hand to his cheek, tears blinding him. “I’m here, my love, I’m here.”

He blinked and she smiled shakily, struggling to open her eyes. “I dreamt they were here,” she said, “All of them, in this room. Even your mother… she held the babe and father seemed so pleased…”

“Shhh, you must rest, you must regain your strength,” he urged her desperately, leaning forward to brush the matted hair from her face.  Her fingers twitched against his cheek, the barest caress.

“You will look after him, won’t you?” she asked, the hand still on their bed moved toward the wrapped bundle beside her. Jon could not bear to look at his son, not now. “Promise me, Jon.”

“ _We’ll_ look after him, Sansa,” he half sobbed, “Together.”

A single tear slid down her cheek. “Promise me, Jon…promise me… that you’ll protect him.”

He could feel her slipping, sliding away from him and into darkness.

“Do something!” he demanded, turning toward Sam, who stood sullen and pale at the foot of the bed. Jon had never seen his friend look so helpless, so terribly sorry, as he shook his head.

Sansa’s hand twitched in his. Jon turned back toward her and grasped her face in his hands.

“Promise me… Jon… promise me.”

He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, each of her closed eyes, her pale, dry lips. “I promise,” he croaked brokenly, “I promise, just stay with me, Sansa, please stay with me.”

“She loves you… Jon… your mother loves you… so much…” her voice drifted and faded and ended on the softest sigh.

Jon placed his head on her silent breast and knew that some precious part of him had died along with her.  

-

-

Their son was strong, healthy, and had the Tully look about him. Arya fawned over him, and Bran took him to sit beneath the heart tree in the godswood to tell him stories of their family, a soft, sad smile on his face. The entire castle loved the little Prince, even as they mourned the loss of their Queen.

For the first few moons, Jon could barely stand to look at him.

But the first time he held him after Arya had all but threatened to throw him from the battlements, his heart was lost. Studying the perfect features of his son’s face, Jon silently wept for all he had lost and every precious thing he had gained.

Besides, his shattered heart whispered, he had made Sansa a promise.

-

-

“Mother was very beautiful wasn’t she, father?” little Benjen, barely five summers, asked as Jon placed a wreath of flowers upon the statue that adorned his wife’s grave. Blue winter roses to match those he’d left upon his mother’s.  

Jon studied the features of the statue for a long moment before speaking. “Yes… she was very beautiful, the most beautiful woman in Westeros. But she was also warm and wise and the kindest person I have ever known. She loved you very, very much.”

Jon didn’t realize his son was crying until he sniffled wetly. “I’m sorry I killed her, father.”

Anger flashed hot and bright as Jon knelt before his son in the heavy darkness of the crypt. He took Benjen by his small shoulders, forcing him to turn, only to find his face crumpled in sadness. “Who told you such a thing?” Jon demanded furiously.

Benjen hiccupped, Tully blue eyes bright with unshed tears. “I heard some of the servants talking-“

“Your mother loved you more than anything in this world, and her dying wasn’t your doing,“ Jon interrupted, giving his son a soft shake before hugging him tightly against his chest. “I don’t ever want to hear you say such things again, do you understand?”

“Yes, father,” Benjen said, voice muffled as he pressed his face into Jon’s neck.

Jon ran a hand over his son’s dark, unruly curls, and looked up and into the stone-carved face of his wife. An odd sort of peace washed over him, and he knew at that moment that somehow, somewhere, Sansa and Lyanna Stark were watching over them.


	9. The Trouble I'm In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon doesn’t sense the danger they’re in until the day on the battlements.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT:"It’s was nice kissing her and hugging, even if it was completely wrong to feel like that" Jon and Sansa. Jon being low key guilty.
> 
> So this got a bit angsty, and a tad pervy, but I hope this will suffice. Rated M for a bit of self-indulgence, if you catch my meaning, winky face.

 

Jon doesn’t sense the danger they’re in until the day on the battlements.

As he descends into the courtyard, lips burning with the memory of her skin beneath them, a twinge of apprehension shivers in his heart. With a frown, he pauses and glances up through the gently falling snow.

Sansa is a beacon of flame against the white and gray as she stands where he left her, staring out across the world. He wonders, not for the first time, what she is thinking. What it is she truly feels about him, about retaking Winterfell, about everything. He is desperate to understand her better, to reconcile this woman of cold steel with the imperious and sweet girl he’d once known. Sometimes he wonders, despite all her kind assurances, if he has disappointed her in some way and why the thought bothers him so much.

With a sigh, he shakes his head and looks away. He has a thousand other worries to occupy his mind. The memory of her skin and the smell of her hair lingers, however, driving him to distraction.

-

-

The details of the dream are indistinct, but the impression is clear.

He awakens trembling and gasping, his cock hard and pulsing with desperate desire. Visions of creamy flesh, gentle curves, and flaming hair flash like the tattered remains of a painting he can only comprehend in snatches. For the first time since his rebirth, Jon feels the familiar and desperate stirring of desire and a longing for warm, human touch.

As he takes himself in hand, stroking and tugging, Jon tells himself he dreamt of Ygritte, that it is her body he’d envisioned beneath him. But even as he groans and gasps, he knows the color of hair and eyes is not quite right. As his climax spears through him, driving the spectre of death just a little further away, he bites his lip for fear of the name that trembles on the tip of his tongue.

-

-

He finds her one afternoon in the godswood. Strolling absently through the wood, attempting to clear his head after another frustratingly fruitless meeting, he’s upon her before he is aware of her presence. Sansa jerks around from where she leans against a snow laden tree and her face is bright with tears.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude,” he blurts immediately, off-kilter and nervous as a boy. Something about Sansa makes him feel a child again, awkward and gangly.

She sniffles and wipes a sleeve across her face. “You’re not intruding,” she says tonelessly and straightens, “I was just leaving.”

Sansa moves to pass him, and something makes him dart out a hand, gripping her arm. She turns to face him with a little crease in her brow.

“Is there something I can do for you… anything to, well, to help?” he fumbles. Her eyes are red-rimmed, and her cheeks and nose are red from cold and sorrow. She is very beautiful, almost painfully so. 

Sansa ducks her head slightly. “We all have our ghosts, Jon, sometimes I am just not very good at ignoring mine.”

Jon shifts his grip and impulsively pulls her into a tight embrace. She is warm and soft against him, and she smells of lavender and juniper. After a moment of hesitation, her arms lift and wrap about him, palms splayed across his back. The heat of her body in the cold of the late afternoon is intense, devastating in its power, and terrifying in its implications. He senses that he is teetering on the brink of a dark chasm, but finds he is unwilling to pull away from the crumbling edge.

“We need not bear the weight of the past alone, Sansa,” he says gruffly into her hair. Not for the first time he thinks that he would be willing to do a great many things to undo the hurts done to her. That he would do anything to protect her from further cruelty or pain. At night he dreams of hurting Ramsey, of killing him a hundred different ways, never fully satisfied with any of them.

Sansa grounds him, keeps him planted firmly in the present and from flying apart in a thousand different directions. She reminds him of what he once was, what he could still be. A sickening sort of desire is humming through his vines as she breathes moist, hot air against his throat and he resists the urge to bury his nose in her hair and to slide his hands up her spine.  

He feels more than hears her in drawn breath, sharp and trembling, as his fingers flex involuntarily against her back. “I’m… I’m so glad we found each other again,” she murmurs.

“So am I,” he whispers in reply, squeezing his eyes closed and feeling as though the words have somehow sealed their fates. “So am I.”


	10. Hungry Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All she can think as she sips from her own glass, the wine strangely sensuous across her tongue, is that she wants him to look at her like that again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT:I am so here for pervy Jon and Sansa. That was wonderful :) Maybe it's Sansa's turn to have some very inappropriate dreams about Jon!

Sansa has grown used to the way men look at her.

In King’s Landing, their eyes had frightened her, sickened her as they followed her across a room or down a corridor. But time spent with Petyr had taught her the power of her beauty and perceived innocence. The way a man’s desires could be used and manipulated to get her what she wanted.

With Jon, however, it is different.

She catches him one night, not long after he’d found her in the godswood, as they share the evening meal with their bannermen in the hall, watching her. His eyes are dark, hooded, and full of something that makes a tiny sun burst into life within her belly before he glances away. Sansa might have dismissed the occurrence as little more than foolish whimsy if Jon’s cheeks hadn’t gone decidedly pink as he took a hasty swallow of wine.

All she can think as she sips from her own glass, the wine strangely sensuous across her tongue, is that she wants him to look at her like that again.

-

-

She takes to watching him train with his men, standing where her mother and father had once stood while watching the boys in the yard. She had always been shut away in her solar in those days, practicing her stitches or learning a new Southern dance. But now… now she feels as though the walls of her childhood home might suffocate her with their memories, held within stone and blood, memories only the frigid air and the clash of swords can banish.

Jon is beautiful in his fury.

Smooth, agile, and graceful as he puts their new men through their paces. Sansa had never realized how much fighting resembled dancing before, and watching him makes her skin hot and her mouth dry. She has seen enough of desire to understand its implications, to know its symptoms, but this is perhaps the first time she’s truly experienced the sensations herself. It’s terrifying, but not for all the reasons it ought to be. The world has taken so much from her. It has taken everything and left nothing but a husk of steel wrapped in silk and anger. Guilt and disgust seem only distant, distant recollections. What use is guilt when the world is ending?

Jon turns then and looks up, wiping the sweat from his brow as snow begins to fall steadily. Their eyes meet, and something dark and full of promise passes between them. Something that makes the little glowing sun in Sansa’s belly descend lower and _pulse_ with a terrible life of its own. She bites her lip, breath catching, and watches with acute pleasure as his eyes narrow and darken.

-

-

He avoids touching her, even as she tries drawing closer to him.

It isn’t entirely intentional, not really. But Jon is suddenly the only warmth in all the world, and she is drawn almost helplessly to him, desperate for a little heat. The flames might consume her, she knows, but Gods, she thinks the pain might be worth it. He’s frightened; she can see it in his eyes as she hands him a glass of wine in his study, fingers brushing and lingering over his.

“Must you leave?” she asks, praying she doesn’t sound as dejected as she feels.

He ducks his head, looking out the frozen window and into the darkness. With Jon, the darkness often seems to stare back. “I’ll only be gone a few days.”

“A lot can happen in a few days,” she snaps, irritable and restless as a child. She doesn’t want him to leave. Damn the Manderly’s and their petty squabbles. Jon might be willing to forgive their betrayals, but Sansa finds her memory is long and treacherous and that there is very little room in her heart for forgiveness any longer.

Jon glances at her, a softness in his eyes that a younger, more foolish Sansa had once longed for in her silly and childish dreams. It makes her chest ache. “I’ll come back,” he says with quiet earnest, “I promise.”

Sansa stiffens, remembering similar promises made by men long dead, and the softness is gone. “You have a habit of making promises you cannot keep,” she retorts icily and leaves before she does something truly foolish, like kissing him.

-

\-                                                                                                                                                                                        

Sansa’s skin feels tight, sensitive and foreign, as she eases into the copper tub. She bites her lip, absurdly close to moaning aloud at the delicious heat of the water as she settles back. For days she has been on edge, not only due to Jon’s absence but for the specter of him in her thoughts. A specter that does dangerous, immoral things to her whenever she shuts her eyes. 

For all that has happened to her, the particulars of the bedchamber still elude her in many ways.

Men have taken from her, but she knows from the whispers at court, that men can also give. Her fantasies are indistinct, childish perhaps, but they make her feel raw and desperate, and her hands slip restlessly along her body.  Through her frantic explorations, across her breasts and down, down, down, it’s Jon’s eyes that watch her, dark and endless as the sea. Jon’s sword roughened hands that dip between her thighs and find the hidden pleasures of her body. Jon’s name on her lips like the prayers she no longer says as she finds a rhythm, a pace that hints at something more, something beyond her imagination. Something she thinks Jon could give her if she only knew how to ask.  

-

-

She is waiting for him in the yard when he finally returns, and something about the weary, dejected look on his face makes her feel daring and foolish. Jon dismounts and she rushes to him, taking one of his gloved hands and pressing a kiss to it as she curtsies. Gods, she is glad to have him home, and safe, where she might watch over him better. For all Jon’s prowess in battle, he knows nothing of being King, of the subtleties of politics and the dangerous games he must play to stay alive.

“Welcome home, Your Grace,” she murmurs, flicking her eyes to his as she rises. His fingers clench against hers, and she feels the shudder that runs through him. A shudder that moves through him and into her until Sansa feels as though they are vibrating together. His eyes, so dark and fathomless at times, are damingly transparent now as they dart to her lips.

“Jon, Sansa,” he nearly growls. “I am always Jon to you.”


	11. Learning to Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They take her to the room where they’ve placed his body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT:hey i saw you were doing prompts and was wondering if maybe you could do one where sansa arrives at the wall before jon is resurrected and she is there to see him come back, and they become even more strongly bonded because she thought she had lost him too but he came back to her

They take her to the room where they’ve placed his body.

Brienne is at her heels, hand fixed firmly on the hilt of her sword as the men of the Night’s Watch shoot wary glances in their direction. The keep is frozen and dark, and as inhospitable and dreary as Sansa had always imagined it would be, its spires like black, dried blood against the white of the Wall. Her ancestors had built this place, had formed the order which now lived within it, but there is no sense of connection, no call to some greater past.  There are only worn black stones and frozen, empty air.

Sansa can sense her protector’s worry and concern, the sentiments so palatable that they are nearly suffocating, but all Sansa actually feels is tired. Tired of the cold, of the snow and darkness. Tired of plans gone wrong and of the ever-present specter death that seems to follow her like a shroud. Tired of being alone in the world, of being the last, broken wolf of House Stark. But, as she looks down upon Jon Snow’s lifeless body – so different, yet so familiar—she is mostly tired of living. Tired of everyone moving on and leaving poor, stupid Sansa behind.

If life has taught her anything, it has taught her that to hope is to hurt. Jon Snow, the brother she had once loved least, had been her very last, desperate hope. In its place, there is only numb acceptance of a lesson she’d learned long ago: Hopes were the realm of silly girls and foolish dreams. 

The red witch performs some sort of ceremony as Sansa sits silently in one corner of the room. The others, – Lord Davos, the red-bearded wildling, the witch– all but ignore her presence. There is a wild desperation to their actions and Sansa realizes that she is not the only person who’d placed all her hopes on the shoulders of one bastard boy. But she is long past prayer and calling upon silent gods. 

Jon, despite the miles of difference and distance between them, had always been good. Once, when Theon had taken her doll, driving her to tears as he dangled it over the battlements, Jon had stolen it back for her. When one of the boys working in the stables said something crude not long after Sansa’s breasts had appeared almost overnight, Jon had punched the other boy square in the jaw without a word.  She had never thanked him for any of it, had taken every incident for granted, and more than anything in the world, she wishes she could tell him how grateful she is. Sansa wants, with a desperation that surprises her, to apologize for her behavior, to apologize for being so blind and foolish and petty. To perhaps garner one of his rare, sweet smiles that had always looked so uncertain, so fragile when they were children. 

Unsurprisingly, the spell doesn’t work. There is no disappointment, only numb acceptance of a world that never gives but only ever takes. Time has taught her that the world kills good men and leaves only the broken and evil behind. 

As a girl, the fear of nothingness after death had frightened her into piety, had frightened her into prayer and obedience. Now that nothingness only offers her a sense of relief, and, not for the first time, she wonders why she bothers to carry on.

They say nothing to her, Jon’s three mourners, they don’t even look at her, as they all dejectedly leave the room.

“My Lady, I-“ Brienne begins, face pained.

“I wish to be alone,” she murmurs, eyes fixated on Jon’s body. She ought to be making plans, deciding her next course of action. But all she sees in her mind is dark wounds on pale skin.

Brienne studies her for a long moment, eyes full of pity and regret, and nods. “I will be just outside.”

Sansa says nothing, and a moment later she is alone with Jon’s corpse and his silent direwolf, Ghost. The massive animal lifts its head as Sansa rises and crosses the room. It makes no sound, only studies her with fathomless eyes, the color of fresh blood, and for the first time in a very long time, she thinks of Lady. Looking back, the death of her own direwolf had served as a cataclysm for all those that had followed.

She isn’t sure how long she stands there, staring at Jon’s body, following the lax lines of his face, the fan of inky lashes on pallid cheeks, the bright line of the wounds which had stolen him from her – that’s what it feels like, a gift proffered and taken back at that last moment–, but eventually she finds herself speaking. 

“I thought of you often in the years since father’s death.” She lifts a hand and traces the scar across his eye. He is handsome, surprisingly so, and reminds her of her father. “I was awful to you, and I am sorry. So sorry. You were always so kind to me, and I was nothing but a spoiled brat. I wish I could have told you how happy it made me, to think of you here, alive at the Wall. How happy it made me to know I was not a-alone.”

Tears splatter across Jon’s chest, and Sansa feels as though she’s being torn from the inside out. She sets her hands to his wounds, feeling each one as if they’ve been inflicted upon her too, mourning something she’d never had but had desperately, desperately wanted.  

Sobbing in earnest, hunched over his body, the hollowness within her grows and swells, threatening to consume her. She hadn’t known what to expect when she saw him again, what he would think of his ragged little sister come begging, but looking at the shell that remains of a man she’d never really known, Sansa thinks he would have helped her, would have cared for her. Jon had been a bastard, the living embodiment of Ned Stark’s one failing, but he’d been good and kind and honorable, just like their father. He would have helped her take their home back, he would have helped her claim vengeance, would have helped her find her way back to herself. Suddenly none of it seems to matter anymore. What is Winterfell when she is all that remains? What is life when everyone she has ever loved or cared for is gone?

With a rattling gasp that Sansa feels in her very bones, the chest beneath her hands expands, ribs creaking, and Jon lurches upwards. She stumbles back and falls flat, her knees having lost all strength, and watches wide-eyed as he gasps and retches as if he’d been several feet underwater rather than stone dead. He turns toward her, shock, horror, and disbelief etched on a face that is no longer gray and waxy but flooded with miraculous life.

“Sansa?” he croaks, blinking at her as if _she_ is the one who’d just risen from the dead.

The door opens, a concerned Brienne on the other side, and the large woman –the hardiest person Sansa has ever known– nearly faints at the sight of Jon. Moments later the room is filled with people, all of them shouting and talking over each other, but Sansa can’t move, can’t speak, can’t do anything but look at Jon. As people fret and fumble and stare in shock, Jon’s eyes never leave hers, never waver as they study one another. 

Something in the world shifts and reorients itself, and Sansa feels reborn.


	12. Into the Long Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I cannot do this, Sansa,” he croaks, feeling the truth of it in his very soul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sansa comes to Jon after his coronation as he struggles with the burden he now bears.

Sansa finds him in his chambers after the coronation and gently takes the spired crown from his hands. Jon doesn’t look away from the low-burning fire as his fingers flex, relax, and flex again, trying to return feeling back to numb appendages. He’s afraid to look at her, to see the truth in her eyes, to know for certain that he is alone. God’s, he is so tired of being alone.

With a soft sigh, like snow falling from a drift, she sets the god’s forsaken piece of metal –unearthed from the tomb of the last Northern King- on his bed and crouches beside him, taking his hands in hers. Her touch sends a flush of warmth through his entire body, and he draws in a shaky breath that rattles painfully against his ribs.

“You need your rest,” she says delicately, soothingly, as though he’s a skittish horse she means to settle. Everything about Sansa is delicate, he thinks, the thought as faint as a whisper but no less potent. But she hides steel in her bones, in her wolf blood, Jon has seen it burning through her eyes. How anyone could mistake her for anything other than a Wolf of Winterfell, he doesn’t know.

Blinking several times slowly, and feeling as though he’d just woken from a particularly unpleasant dream, Jon turns to her at last. He finds only warmth and concern in the Tully blue of her eyes and the firelight turns her hair to flames that snap and flutter against the dove-gray of her gown.

“I cannot do this, Sansa,” he croaks, feeling the truth of it in his very soul.

She merely smiles and cups his cheek in her hand with the sort of tenderness Jon, in all his pathetic life, has never experienced. Something inside his chest snaps apart and begins to reshape itself. “You can and you will, Jon Snow,” she says with such certainty that it nearly robs him of breath. 

Studying her face for a long moment, Jon searches for the girl he’d once known in the woman before him and finds only light and shadow playing across a face etched from porcelain and ivory. There are times when Jon looks at her and isn’t certain she’s real.

“Not without you,” he says and feels as if each word is a weight lifted from his breast. 

Somehow, Sansa’s become the one thing in all the wretched world that can anchor him in reality, that gives his second chance at life some sense of purpose and duty. Without her, he is sure that whatever remains of his strength and courage would fail him entirely.

Sansa pulls him downward with a gentle press of her fingers and touches his forehead to hers, sharing his air and his burdens, anchoring him to her through the storm that rages within. The scent of lemons and freshly fallen snow fills his lungs, and it holds the darkness at bay.

“I’m here, Jon, I’m here.”


	13. Of Dreams and Wishes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon frowned down at her. “Women in what condition?”
> 
> Sansa bit her lip, and a flush rose in her pallid cheeks. “Women who are with child.”
> 
> And, just like, the center of Jon’s world shifted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT:"I am in desperate need of a sappy Jonsa fic :') Sansa and Jon have a baby and it freaking changes Jon's world. He can't thank Sansa enough for giving him something he never thought he would have.

Jon stormed through the halls of Winterfell, servants, and workers darting out of his way as his cloak swung out behind him. This section of the castle was nearly repaired and warmer than most, which was why he and his lady-wife had laid claim to it, but it was also why it was the most heavily trafficked.

Grim-faced, lips pressed into a tight line, the King in the North was even more intimidating than usual, and no one dared get in his way. 

Drawing in a sharp breath, attempting to master his emotions, Jon stepped into his chambers. His eyes fell immediately to the prostrated form of his wife on their bed. She looked pale in the faint winter sunlight, and her eyes were closed. They fluttered open, however, as he quickly moved to her side, heart in his throat.

Sansa chuckled softly and smiled up at him. “I’m fine, Jon,” she said with apparent amusement.

“They say you fainted,” he countered, pressing a hand to her forehead. Her skin was cool but a tad clammy.

Another amused chuckle and she grasped his hand to press a warm kiss to the back of it. Her touch, as always, sent a heated and delicious jolt through his body. “I am fine, dearest, truly. I hear such episodes are quite natural for women in my condition who skip their morning meals.”

Jon frowned down at her. “Women in what condition?”

Sansa bit her lip, and a flush rose in her pallid cheeks. “Women who are with child.”

And, just like, the center of Jon’s world shifted.

-

-

“She isn’t made of glass, Jon,” Arya said dryly as her hand held him back from lurching across the yard to Sansa’s side where she was dismounting from the back of the docile mare he’d insisted she ride. 

They’d just returned from a short trip into Wintertown, making a show of examining the new wall that was currently under construction, per Bran’s design, and they’d gotten into a short row about Sansa joining him at all. Short mostly because Sansa had told him point blank that she would not be kept inside the castle like a fat, useless house cat.

Jon shot Arya a dirty look, and she snorted. “You’re going to smother her,” his sister-turned-cousin continued. “She’s only barely showing, and you’ve not even made a formal announcement to the court yet. Besides, you’ve got months to lose your mind.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re _terrible_ at being comforting,” he grumbled, willing himself into stillness as Sansa laughed at something Lord Cerwyn said and handed her mount off to a stable lad.

“Honesty isn’t usually very comforting,” Arya replied cheerfully. “Come on; I’ll let you hit me about in the training yard, that always makes you feel better.”

-

-

“I’m as fat as Robert Baratheon ever was,” Sansa complained as she arched forward, attempting to see her feet over the expanse of her rounding belly beneath her dressing gown, and failing.

Jon chuckled from his place in their bed, warm all over from just watching her. Sometimes he felt so full of pride and elation he could hardly stand to look at her, but tonight he drank his fill. Her hair, longer than it had been when they’d wed near a full year ago, was loose across her shoulders and down her back, the light from the hearth fire shining through the thin material of her gown, casting into sharp silhouette the changing lines of her body. Between one breath and the next, he was painfully hard beneath the furs.

“Come here,” he commanded gently as she smoothed both her hands over her belly, a knowing look in her eyes. “I’ll rub your back.”

“And a few other places?” she teased, taking his offered hand.

Rather than shifting to lay beside him, Sansa straddled his waist and sat in his lap, raking her fingers through his hair. Jon shivered, hands falling instinctively to her hips, their babe nestled between them. The child, who was very active during the day, was presently still, giving the moment a strangely breathless quality.

“Only if you want me to,” he promised huskily, shifting his hands up to press hard, soothing circles against her lower back, causing her eyes to flutter and a soft groan of relief and pleasure to slip from between her lips. Unable to resist the temptation, Jon leaned forward to press a wet kiss along her collarbone as her fingers flexed against his scalp.

Sansa loved his hair, he knew. She was constantly touching it and playing with it when they were alone, and Jon had grown rather fond of the gesture. After a lifetime of distance and cold reproach, hardly a kind touch to be had, it was still sometimes strange to so frequently be the object of physical affection.

Sansa unlaced the front of her gown, her shift slipping down her shoulders to pool at her waist as she shrugged her arms free. Jon immediately reached for her breasts, already grown larger in preparation for their child, and gently thumbed her hyper-sensitive nipples. Sansa whimpered and ducked her head to capture his lips in a hot, languid kiss.

As much as Jon appreciated the passion between them, which had been far more than either of them had ever hoped for when they’d first wed, it was this gentleness, this sense that despite the coming darkness, they had all the time in the world that he truly cherished. Jon traced the ridges of her spine, the fan of her delicate shoulder blades, feeling the faint scars of the hardship she’d endured in the South and the quiet strength beneath them. He threaded his fingers through the silken fall of her hair and tasted the sweetness of her throat.

“Oh, _Jon_ ,” she breathed, rocking into him a bit and raking her nails across his shoulders.

He pulled back slightly and looked up at her, flushed and more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen, full and lush with their child. _Mine,_ some primal part of him insisted, _mine_.

“I love you,” Jon said, without consciously considering the words. But they were true, perhaps the most genuine words he’d ever said. Love was dangerous in times like theirs, but some days, he thought it was perhaps all any of them had left.

Sansa’s eyes fluttered open and tears welled. She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to his,  a bit awkward with the firmness of her belly between them but no less sweet.

“I love you too, Jon,” she breathed, and he could taste every word, swallowing them and keeping them in the deepest reaches of his soul.

-

-

A scream tore through the hall, and Jon lurched to his feet, Ghost in counterpoint with a low growl. Arya’s hand shot out to stay him, as always, face grim. “I’ll go, I should be with her anyway, just figured I’d be in the way.”

Jon could only nod, words failing him entirely as Arya left Sansa’s solar. Bran gave him a wane smile, and Tormund shoved an ale into his hands. Another scream rent the air and Jon cradled his head in one hand. 

“They have a saying, beyond the wall,” Tormund offered cheerfully, “that a babe who’s brought into the world through the screams of his mother screams against the darkness.”

Sansa cried out yet again as if to punctuate this statement, and Jon gritted his teeth. “No offense, Tormund, but your Wildling proverbs can eat shit.”

Tormund snorted and reached out to push against the bottom of Jon’s mug and Jon reluctantly took a sip. “We also get piss drunk and usually hit each other until it’s over.”

Jon scoffed dryly. “Wouldn’t mind hitting you in your thick skull a few times.”

Brienne sighed disparagingly. “It doesn’t help, I’ve tried.”

Tormund seemed deeply pleased by this comment and drained his mug in one sloppy swallow.

-

-

It was well into the night, Tormund slumped and snoring near the hearth, and Brienne a solemn sentinel in one corner, when the door connecting to the chamber Jon shared with Sansa opened, and Arya stepped out. She looked haggard and weary, but a brilliant smile lit her face.

“You have a daughter, Your Grace,” she said with a teasingly lit, but Jon hardly heard the words as he stepped past her into the room.

Sansa sat upright in their bed, the midwife and Sam smiling at him from near her side, but he had only eyes for her. On knees that shook, he moved forward and collapsed on the bed beside her, trembling with emotions he couldn’t name.

Once, there had been a foolish, bitter boy who’d gone north. He’d been full of anger and the broken pieces of dreams that would never be realized. Dreams he’d tried to convince himself had never existed at all.

But now they sat before him, in the tender smile on his wife’s weary face, in the slight weight of his daughter in his arms, and tears burned in his eyes. The babe had her mother’s look, with a heart shaped face and wisps of curling reddish hair. Jon pressed a kiss to her head, tears falling to stain perfect, soft, pink skin, and he looked to Sansa again, moisture on her cheeks as well. There were no words for the connection that lay between them. It bridged countries, wars, worlds and all manner of horrors.

“Thank you,” he croaked and leaned forward to kiss her. _Thank you for giving me everything I never dared dream I’d have_.  


	14. Unspoken Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon just wants to protect Sansa but Sansa is tired of being protected.

Jon dropped the parchment in his hands to the cluttered desk below and sighed deeply. He’d read the same line at least four times and had retained none of it. Clearly his ability to be productive was non-existent and he rubbed a hand over his weary face, tugging absently at his growing beard. Sansa had been eyeing his jaw meaningfully for at least a week and he knew it wasn’t long for this world.  
  
Outside, snow fell in heavy sheets, making the hour indistinct and the light that managed to filter in from smoky windows gray and melancholy. The large hearth fire in his rooms helped to keep the darkness at bay, but even its bright flames couldn’t quite banish all the shadows that lingered in the corners of Winterfell. Jon was quite certain nothing ever would.  
  
There were days, when memories of Robb and Arya were particularly strong and sharp, that he almost wished he’d left it to the Boltons.  
  
His meeting with Daenerys Targaryen, the Dragon Queen, and, apparently, his Aunt, dominated his thoughts, hardly allowing him to sleep let alone think rationally. When she’d sent word that she wished to treat with him, Jon hadn’t been precisely sure what to expect. He’d heard tale of her beauty, her ferocity, and the terrific reality of her dragons, but he had not expected her to be so… small, so delicate looking. Not that she hadn’t proven herself bold and regal in their dealings, but the reality of her had set him a bit on edge. He didn’t know if he could trust her. She’d made pretty promises and smiled kindly when he spoke, but something about her made him wary, made him unsure of himself and what she really wanted. The looming shadow of her dragons seemed to hang over the entire north, despite her promises to leave their fledgling kingdom be once the White Walkers were dealt with.  
  
Not for the first time, Jon questioned his ability to lead, to rule, to play the game of politics and courtly intrigue. Fighting he could do. In all truth, fighting was the only thing he could do with any amount of skill. He’d been wielding a sword since he was old enough to lift a practice weapon and he’d killed more men than he could count. More men than he cared to remember. It had won him leadership before, and everyone knew where that had gotten him. The crown of the Northern kings sat in his desk drawer and the mere sight of it made his stomach churn and his shoulders ache with the burden of it. He’d only ever worn it once, on the day of his coronation. He would be quite content to never wear it again.  
  
Jon rubbed unconsciously at his chest, just above his heart, where a gray tinged scar remained as a permanent reminder of what happened the last time he’d tried to lead men. Tried to change the world. Tried to be honorable and bold.  
  
The door to his rooms burst open, startling him to his feet, and his hand reached for the sword that wasn’t at his hip but instead rested near his bed. Sansa strode toward him as he came out from behind his desk, a living storm of heavy skirts and fiery hair, and struck him hard across the face. Pain blossomed and Jon cupped the side of his face, utterly stunned.  
  
“How dare you!” she railed at him, her cheeks flushed with furry and her eyes glittering with rage and hurt.  
  
“Sansa-“ he managed, caught completely off guard, his hand still held to his burning face. He’d never seen Sansa so angry. He’d never heard her even raise her voice, at least not since their reunion.  
  
“How dare you leave me behind, Jon Snow! How dare you keep things from me!” she spat at him, tears welling in her eyes. “Is this because of Petyr? Because I didn’t tell you I’d asked for his aid? I said I was sorry, I promised to be more open with you and I have tired,” she hurried on, her voice a rush as she began to pace. Jon had never seen his sister-turned-cousin so undone. It was so out of character it was more startling than her slap. “Perhaps I deserve it, perhaps you’re right to punish me,” she continued, wringing her hands together as a tear slipped down her cheek, caught in the light of the fire and gleaming brightly. It drew his eye to the graceful slope of her cheek, the angle of her jaw, and the length of her neck. “But I thought you would be different, that this would be different,” she waved her hand between them, her eyes finally meeting his.  
  
Any anger he may have had toward her almost instantly vanished and he found himself reaching for her, taking her hand in his, deeply troubled by her distress and terrified by the idea that he had caused it. It was funny to consider how much she meant to him now, how much he cared for her, when they’d been so at odds as children. She was a piece of their shared childhood he’d never dared hope to have again, and the thought of losing her made him think of those knives sliding through his flesh, stabbing deep. The thought of losing her felt like another kind of death. She was the very last piece of the man he used to be.  
  
“Sansa, what are you talking about?” he said with gentle force, tightening his hand over hers as she attempted to pull away. She wouldn’t look at him now and he could feel her trying to pull her mask back up, the one she wore nearly at all times save for brief private moments that always felt like a gift and happened far too rarely.  
  
She drew in a shaky breath, her shoulders tightening. “You went without me, without saying a single word to me. You went and met with her and you didn’t even have the decency to discuss it with me!”  
  
Jon felt his brow furrow and his lips turn down into a frown, understanding and some amount of shame coiling in his gut. She was right, he had kept it from her. But only to spare her, to keep her safe. “Sansa, I-“  
  
Her eyes lifted and the hurt and betrayal within them was enough to take his breath away.  
  
“Do you value my opinion so little?” she asked bitterly. “Do you think I know nothing of courtly intrigue and politics? Did you not consider that I might have some useful insight into the diplomacy and care such a meeting might require?” Her voice rose with nearly every word and tears spilled freely down her cheeks. “I survived for years on my own in King’s Landing, surrounded by enemies and abusers, the people who murdered my father and mother, and brother, around every Gods’ forsaken corner, and how do you think I managed it, hum? By being an utter simpleton?! You know nothing of what it means to run a kingdom, to play their games, Jon Snow.”  
  
Her words struck an aching cord, reminding him of an old hurt, of a brief bright blip in his cold, lonely life that been ripped away from him. “I was trying to protect you!” he all but roared at her, taking a step forward and jerking her closer, thinking of hair a shade darker than hers, red as flames, fanned out across the snow as blood seeped through the strands.  
  
Sansa stared at him with wide eyes for a moment before anger flashed and straightened her shoulders. “I do not want to be protected!” she yelled in turn. “All anyone has ever done is locked me away and tried to protect me! I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again, you can’t protect me, Jon. No one can!”  
  
She was very close to him. Close enough that he could see the pale smattering of freckles along the bridge of her nose, constellations his fingers were suddenly desperate to trace, and the flecks of burning green in her eyes. She’d been a pretty child and she’d bloomed into a beautiful woman, just looking at her sometimes made his heart clench in a way he wasn’t sure he wanted to understand. He’d had to remind himself more often than he wanted to admit that, though they were not truly brother and sister as they’d once believed, they been raised as such.  Sometimes, when he was alone with his demons at night, it was hard to remember why such a distinction mattered.    
  
It was that ache, that quiver of fear that he would fail her as everyone else had, that had kept him from taking her with him. The thought of her safe in Winterfell had brought him some comfort, especially when Tyrion Lannister had appeared, a living embodiment of her time spent among traitorous lions.  
  
“You’ve been through enough, endured more than you should ever have had to,” he insisted, his voice faintly pleading, desperate. He felt as though she were slipping through his fingers and he need only say or do the right thing to keep her but had no idea what that thing might be. “Let me at least do what I can to give you the life you deserve.”  
  
Her nose crinkled in disgust and her eyes were full of disdain. “What I deserve? I deserve nothing, none of us do, and the world doesn’t care either way. I am not the little girl you knew any more than you’re the boy I remember. I do not wish to be kept in cage and occasionally pampered and preened over. I have not lived through my horrors only to be cast aside and dismissed as a silly girl full of silly dreams.”  
  
There was a desperation in her eyes, and beneath it an endless sea of remembered pain and terrible regret. In many ways, it was like looking into a mirror. “What is it you want of me, Sansa?” he asked, hardly aware he’d spoken and almost instantly wishing the words back. He felt as though he’d just stepped onto a frozen lake whose ice had grown suddenly thin.  
  
Sansa’s eyes darted briefly, unconsciously, toward his lips, sending heat shooting through his limbs and settling shamefully in his groin. He felt as though a strong wind might tear him apart as the silence between them stretched before she finally spoke.  
  
“I want to be appreciated, Jon, respected even,” she breathed, hardly more than a whisper. “I want to be wanted, needed… l-loved,” her voice broke on the last word as he felt himself, his feelings, his wishes, reflected in her words. Her face was close, so close -close enough to capture, to take. But she wasn’t meant for him. She had never been meant for him, and she’d had enough men take things from her.  
  
Sansa tore herself away as Jon fought in vain for something, anything to say, and she left the room as quickly as she’d come. He could still feel the burning imprint of her hand on his face and it seemed to have seared into his heart as well.  
  
Jon had no idea how long he stood there, staring at the open door, torn between tearing after her, taking her into his arms, begging her to understand just how much he needed her, and locking himself in his rooms forever where he might prevent himself from falling further into unrequited, depraved desire.    
  
_Love_ , he thought dismally, _who could help but love her?_

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews are lovely and so are you!


End file.
